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Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP government can’t win the next election unless it wins Calgary and it can’t win Calgary with an unemployment rate stuck north of eight per cent.

And that’s exactly where we sit, despite the endless blather and bluster about those emerging green shoots and that now infamous economy-boosting, pipeline-constructing social licence an imposed carbon tax would deliver.

The September jobless report for Calgary spells it out in type large enough even this myopic government must have come to notice, their vision no doubt clearing as the next provincial election looms into view.

With less than nine months until Calgarians again go to the polls, the September unemployment rate in our city stands at a dreary 8.2 per cent. Meanwhile, in Edmonton, the rate has dropped to 6.3 per cent — a tale of two cities indeed, under the NDP.

Now a few years ago, the excuse that oil prices were in the dumpster gave the government a fig leaf behind which to cover. But today, with prices well past the $70-a-barrel mark, such reasoning has fallen away, along with the naive belief that joining hands with the Liberals in Ottawa would somehow end well for Alberta. (This government is full of university-educated ministers but did none of them take history?)

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The reality is that many large, international energy companies picked up sticks and left three years ago and show no sign of returning, which is why there are still so many empty office spaces downtown: ask city hall what that’s done to its tax revenues or local charities how it’s affected corporate donations.

Yet, despite this long-running sore of joblessness, there remains a career-ending blind spot among the NDP’s top brass. It’s one that is no doubt driven by a mix of political correctness and mind-set-in-stone stubbornness that prevents the jobless forest from being spotted among the unemployed trees.

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Labour Minister Christina Gray is a perfect example. Given the jobless numbers that have dogged her ministry for more than three years, one would have thought that the bleeding obvious would have been spotted a long time ago in a precursor to providing some governmental solution or program.

Think again. Delve just a tad deeper into Alberta’s unemployment numbers — put out by Gray’s own department, for heaven’s sake — and right there in black and white is a statistic that jumps off the page to anyone still blessed with an open mind.

Which group in this province is suffering the most from unemployment? By a long way it is males aged between 15 and 24; afflicted by an atrocious jobless number of 15.1 per cent. The corresponding rate for females is 10.6 per cent.

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Now, imagine yourself a minister of labour, knowing your own government’s hopes of re-election stand or fall by how many people find work. Wouldn’t you look at that awful outlier number and devise some program that at least attempts to reduce joblessness among young men in Alberta?

And maybe you could ask for some stats from the Health Ministry about who exactly is dying in this opioid crisis we’re experiencing, one taking two lives a day in Alberta. Then perhaps a light bulb might burst into life when it is noticed the biggest victim group is males between 25 and 35.

For a woman who likes her meta-data, Gray might need a refresher course. Young men who can’t get work often turn self-destructive, so maybe there is a correlation between not having a job, turning to opioids and then dying a half dozen years later.

But do we hear the words ‘we must help young men’ emanate from our labour minister’s lips? Of course not — take a quick trip through her Twitter for evidence. Instead, we hear how repeated minimum wage hikes help women and those with families.

Hey, gender equality should not be a one-way street. But with this government it is and that street leads to a single destination: electoral disaster.

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